Sarah Palin at one of her book signing this past week.
There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin‘s Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line.
But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden.
As the epigram to Chapter Three, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:
Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.
Only the quote wasn’t by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled “Back on the War Ponies,” which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
Here’s the full quote:
Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Have you ever argued politics with a conservative counterpart and felt as if you were speaking two different languages? Well, you were. In order to bridge the divide, we have developed some definitions in the hopes of making things a bit easier.
con-serv-a-tive [kuhn-sur-vuh-tiv] -noun: A liberal who has not yet figured out how to think for himself/herself.
def-i-cit [def-uh-sit; Brit. also di-fis-it] -noun: The amount by which a sum of money falls short of the required amount, which only matters when a Democrat is elected to office.
fil-i-bus-ter [fil-uh-buhs-ter] -noun: The Republican’s health care plan.
sen-ate [sen-it] -noun: an assembly or council of citizens having the highest deliberative functions in a government, easily manipulated by a single Senator from Connecticut who craves power and attention.
sur-plus [sur-pluhs] -noun: A thing of the past.
con-sti-tu-tion [kon-sti-too-shuhn, -tyoo-] -noun: the system of fundamental principles according to which a nation, state, corporation, or the like is governed. Used to discourage health coverage to others, and promote guns. Frequently used as buzzword without ever being read by person using.
stim-u-lus [stim-yuh-luh s] -noun, plural-li: A trip to Argentina for a visit with your mistress, which could potentially cost you your job as Governor of South Carolina.
di-ver-si-ty [di-vur-si-tee, dayh-] -noun-plural-ties: The state or fact of being diverse; variety. Best adhered to by publishing ten rules and excluding everyone unwilling to abide.
gov-ern-ment [guhv-ern-muhnt, -er-muhnt] -noun: something evil and ineffective that needs to be limited to giving tax breaks for the rich, subsidies for powerful interests, and wars fought by the middle and lower-classes.
Outgoing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (2nd L), her husband Todd (C) look on as incoming Governor Sean Parnell (2nd R) is sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Daniel Winfree (L) during the annual Governor's Picnic July 26, 2009 at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks, Alaska. Parnell' wife Sandy held the bible for the ceremony. Craig E. Campbell was sworn in as the new Lieutenant Governor.
Last July in Fairbanks, with Todd smiling at her side and Piper sitting in her lap, Sarah Palin watched Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell take the oath to fill out her term in office as Governor of Alaska. Then she vanished. For the past four months the Forty-Ninth State has seen neither hide nor hair of the woman. No speeches at chambers of commerce luncheons. No sightings on the street. No Sarah cheering on the sideline at Wasilla Warriors girls basketball games. No Sarah sitting in the pew on Sunday worshiping at the ChangePoint and Anchorage Baptist Temple evangelical mega churches. She’s been gone. Disappeared.
It now turns out that while Alaskans were hunkering down for winter Sarah was in San Diego working for a woman named Lynn Vincent, the ghostwriter HarperCollins hired to cobble together Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah’s first person account of her it-only-would-happen-in-America rise from small town mayor to small state governor to Republican Vice Presidential candidate to popular culture icon.
Since Tuesday when Going Rogue was released nationwide copies of the book have been flying off the shelves at Barnes & Noble in Boise and Grand Rapids and not flying off the shelves in San Francisco and Seattle.
Since I already have enough to read, I had intended to give Going Rogue a pass until I had time this weekend to motor over to the Anchorage Barnes & Noble and give Ms. Vincent’s word-smithing a skim. But on Monday I learned that I’m in the book. Not surprisingly, that piqued my interest. And then yesterday a friend lent me a copy.
Former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin signed a book outside Barnes & Noble Booksellers at Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids on Wednesday evening.
A dangerous divide has been developing for some years in America, between those who are comfortable negotiating the wide array of knowledge and information sources now available, and those who are not. It is in many aspects a class divide, one side characterized by wealth, professional degrees, security and complacency, the other by shrinking incomes and high credit card debt, anxiety about the future, and anger at those in power.
One U.S. Senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, recently called this America’s greatest present danger, more potent than our international entanglements, the financial crisis, health care, energy or environment. The “tea party” protests over health care and immigration policy are one manifestation of that divide. Another, related, is the current response to Sarah Palin.
Palin has become the champion of a new wave of populism. People attracted to her are outraged over federal bailouts for Wall Street bankers, resentful of benefits accorded illegal immigrants, incensed over the notion of federally funded abortions, and perhaps most disturbing, suspicious of education. A fairly consistent analysis of the Palin phenomenon concludes that she is the happy beneficiary of this protest coalition, having happened into her celebrity role by the accident of timing, a willing but passive instrument. But her willing embrace of the role of symbolic embodiment of protest makes her as much a generator as recipient of it.
Former Alaska Public Safety Employees Association Executive Director John Cyr (left) and Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten, Sarah Palin's former brother-in-law and the trooper at the center of the Alaska Govenor Palin Troopergate Scandal.
The Alaska State Trooper at the center of Sarah Palin‘s so-called “Troopergate Scandal“–which impeded her run for the vice-presidency and stained her record as Alaska governor–has broken his more than year-long silence since his embattled divorce with Palin’s sister, Molly, became a cause celebre during last year’s presidential campaign.
After reading passages from Palin’s memoirs Going Rogue that deal with his marriage and subsequent divorce, a “fed up” Mike Wooten, 37, who still serves as an Alaska State Trooper in Anchorage, called the book “a pack of lies.”
According to Wooten, Palin and her father, Chuck Heath Sr., have “interfered with my life–and my children’s lives–for at least the last five years. And it is still going on. I’m done with it.”
Characterizing his adversaries as “snakes,” Wooten said he has kept quiet long enough. “From this point on I’m speaking my mind,” he declared. “I’m speaking the truth. Let the chips fall where they may.” He acknowledged that he is considering taking legal action against Palin on multiple fronts.
Although Palin would try to claim otherwise during the presidential campaign, an independent investigation ordered by the bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council (composed of ten Republicans and four Democrats) and conducted by former Republican prosecutor Steve Branchflower, resulted in the finding “that Governor Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.”
Fox News host Glenn Beck put to rest any rumors of one possible “dream ticket” team for 2012: Palin-Beck. On his radio show Thursday, Beck said he was “absolutely” ruling out the possibility of running for office with the ex-governor at the top of the ticket. His proffered reason: Palin would always be “yapping,” like they were “in the kitchen.”
Earlier in the week Palin said that she was open to the idea of pairing up with Beck. Palin told Fox News she “got a kick” out of the idea of them running together. She went on cheerfully, “He probably thought it was just a hoot too. I don’t know, we’ll see.” Palin told Newsmax she could “envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I’m not there yet.” She added: “But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He’s a hoot.”
It looks like the respect might not be mutual. From the morning’s radio show:
BECK: I don’t think things are hoots. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a hoot. I would never use the word hoot, and I respectfully ask that every time my name is brought up she would stop using the word ‘hoot.’ [...]No, no I’m just saying — Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine, can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? What? Come on! She’d be yapping or something, and I’d say, “I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.”
Sarah Palin, feeling unprepared, pulled out of a Univision interview that John McCain wound up doing by himself.
A top adviser on Hispanic issues to John McCain’s presidential campaign said Sunday that a joint interview with McCain and Sarah Palin planned for Univision last fall had to be canceled because Palin was unprepared to discuss Latin America policy.
“She did not feel comfortable speaking about issues regarding Hispanics and Latin America,” GOP consultant Ana Navarro told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos in an interview. “Those are not topics that come up frequently in Alaska. So she asked to cancel the interview and, unfortunately, you were already there.”
Gretchen Carlson of Fox News interviews Sarah Palin during her “Going Rogue” book tour. Carlson states Sarah Palin wrote her own book and gives Palin a “hats off to you as a mom” for Palin explaining she had to change a diaper before going out to debate Vice President Joe Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign. Really?? What would a baby be doing back stage at a vice presidential debate? And Sarah Palin really expects us to believe, after all the makeup and wardrobe preparations, that just before stepping on the stage there was Trig with a dirty diaper and NO ONE else around to change it??
Carlson is not sure why women are so divided on Palin …
Former Gov. Sarah Palin‘s book, “Going Rogue,” blames her first legislative director for moves early in her term that helped poison her relationship with state lawmakers. But the ex-aide, John Bitney, calls Palin’s account a fabrication and said he wishes his former boss would leave him alone.
“I’m just pilloried right and left and turned into the big bad wolf here for stuff I didn’t do,” said Bitney, who is now an aide to Valdez Republican Rep. John Harris. “It’s like I’m this fictional character that she’s decided to make me out to be this sort of incompetent slob.”
Palin’s lawyer, Tom Van Flein, responded in an e-mail that Bitney and others have been talking about “their perceptions of, and distortions about” Palin for more than a year, since after she was chosen as Sen. John McCain‘s vice presidential running mate.
Chase Whitestead and Erick Stroll of “New Left Media“ set out to determine just what was it about Sarah Palin that impelled her supporters to stand in massive lines for hours for the chance to meet her at book signings.
They interviewed several of her supporters who were waiting in line at a Borders bookstore in Columbus, Ohio. These fans expressed very strong support for Palin, but it was mostly couched in vague generalities about her being “real” and “strong” and “fair.”
When pressed to cite specific policies that they favored or thought qualified her for the presidency, most of her fans struggled to come up with anything other than generic lines about cutting taxes and spending and the Palin staple: “drill, baby, drill.”
On the other hand, they were all worried that President Obama has been doing enormous damage to the country. However, again, specifics eluded them.
On November 20, 2009, Sarah Palin visited Columbus, OH as part of her book signing tour for “Going Rogue.” When her supporters were asked broad questions about why they why they thought she should be president, the responses were vague: She’s “real.” She’ll “stick up for America.”
THERE ARE UNINFORMED OBAMA SUPPORTERS, TOO
It has been said in comments that we would find similarly talking point-driven, substance-less supporters at an Obama rally, and we agree. But no politician has emerged on the national stage as undefined and unqualified as Sarah Palin, and her public persona–which is anti-intellectual by definition–discourages substance. Instead, we get winking. One could hardly imagine her giving a complex speech about race in America, or speaking eloquently about our country’s relations with Islam. Not just because she couldn’t write such a speech (Obama has speech-writers, of course) but because she wouldn’t–such necessarily academic discussion is antithetical to the persona she’s created for herself and that her supporters have come to love.
CHERRY-PICKING
As for accusations of cherry picking, which are commonly thrown at interview-based videos, it simply isn’t what we did. We interviewed only a few more people than ended up in the video, not hundreds, and what was cut was done for time purposes. The people were selected at random–some offered to be interviewed–and we were only there for about 90 mins (it gets dark early and fast in Ohio right now). What didn’t make it into the video was just more footage of people talking generically or about taxes/spending, drilling, and abortion, and we constructed blocks in the piece to represent those issues. Of course the piece was edited to be entertaining (this is YouTube, after all, where the currency is cat videos) but we don’t believe we misrepresented the attitudes of the people at that signing in any way.
This NEW LEFT MEDIA film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviews) and Erick Stoll (camera).
n-sur-vuh-tiv] -noun: A liberal who has not yet figured out how to think for himself/herself.
